The advertisement, which will run in Michigan during the Super Bowl and afterward, features an Asian female with a conical straw hat riding a bike through a rice paddy field.

[...] The Hoekstra campaign called the advertisement “satirical” and explained the broken English in the video as a reflection of China’s increasingly competitive education system.

[...] “I think that China is our global competitor and the facts are what they are. They hold $1.1 trillion of our debt, their economy is booming, ours is not. It’s not a racial overtone to compare yourself to competitors on the global stage,” added Ciaramitaro. “I think the viewer of an ad is going to recognize satire. … I wouldn’t agree of the characterization [of the ad] as racial.”

The advertisement also features a video of Hoekstra, saying, “I think this race for Michigan Senate is between Debbie ‘spend-it-now’ and Pete ‘spend-it-not’ - I’m Pete ‘spend-it-not’ Hoekstra.”

The ad buy, according to Hoekstra’s campaign, begins Sunday and will run for two weeks. The advertisement has already run in the Detroit, and will run in every one of Michigan’s television markets.

Earlier tonight, I read about this wonderful ad from a wannabe-Senator that stereotypes all Chinese people as conical-hat-wearing folks, complete with the bicycle, gong noises, rice paddy fields, and broken English.

The woman’s English in the video was horrendous. It is cruel, stereotypical, and wrong to portray her in this way, especially because she is clearly an Asian-American woman whose English has no speech impediments and no accents whatsoever, the only modification being the removal of a few words to "Chinkify" her speech. Having her represent the country of China where she uses the phrase “us” when she is clearly an American is completely inappropriate.

No, of course it’s satirical and not racial at all to stereotype an entire culture and country of people with this woman (who by all appearances is an Asian-American actress) with a fake broken Chinglish. It’s satirical to perpetuate a stereotype that minorities like yours truly try to combat, correct, and educate others about every day.

And then this glorious gem from the Politico article:

“You have a Chinese girl speaking English - I want to hit on the education system, essentially. The fact that a Chinese girl is speaking English is a testament to how they can compete with us, when an American boy of the same age speaking Mandarin is absolutely insane, or unthinkable right now,” Hoekstra spokesperson Paul Ciaramitaro told POLITICO. “It exhibits another way in which China is competing with us globally.”

A Chinese girl speaking English. Imagine that.

The Hoekstra spokesperson even has the gall to say, “I think the viewer of this ad will recognize satire."

Still have to wonder about the actors in these skits. "Needed the money" perhaps?

Of course, the entire premise is bullshit to begin with. China's economy is growing because it has a current account surplus e.g. its imports exceed its exports. It does this via a number of protectionist policies, most notoriously through its currency manipulation, one major factor of which is... buying our debt. This isn't a good thing for the Chinese people - it reduces the real current buying power of the average Chinese worker, meaning they're not actually receiving the benefit of their own economic boom.

“You have a Chinese girl speaking English - I want to hit on the education system, essentially. The fact that a Chinese girl is speaking English is a testament to how they can compete with us, when an American boy of the same age speaking Mandarin is absolutely insane, or unthinkable right now,” Hoekstra spokesperson Paul Ciaramitaro told POLITICO. “It exhibits another way in which China is competing with us globally.”

... it's really not unthinkable. Not at all. I can't count the number of my American friends who speak Chinese on my hands, not to get into other foreign languages. They are outnumbered by the Chinese I know who speak English, but I dealt with all these people in America so there's probably some sample bias.

Also, the Chinese education system is not all that great. There are some great schools in China, but on the whole, China ranks below average on educational assessments, coming in 97th place out of 179 last year. China is not boosting its economy with skilled labor, it's boosting it with cheap labor.

Fun fact: The only Asian nation with a higher score than the US for the educational portion of the HDI is South Korea. In fact several former Soviet states outdo East Asian ones, with Kazakhstan coming in second in terms of Asian educational systems. Yet we have Borat as the Kazakh stereotype, while Japan has a stereotype of education and intelligence... Well, stereotypes not making sense is nothing new.

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Still have to wonder about the actors in these skits. "Needed the money" perhaps?

You can generally find an actor who will do just about anything. Only already famous actors can afford to be picky. Not to mention actors of Asian descent can have a hard time getting work since Hollywood seems to prefer hiring people actually from the orient as opposed to Americans who are descended from such.

Indeed. My 2nd cousin spent his entire military career as a linguist speaking mandarin and made a VERY good living after he retired doing the same job at 3x the pay afterwards. Even a decade after his death I'm seeing a lot of what he said about China coming true.

“You have a Chinese girl speaking English - I want to hit on the education system, essentially. The fact that a Chinese girl is speaking English is a testament to how they can compete with us, when an American boy of the same age speaking Mandarin is absolutely insane, or unthinkable right now,” Hoekstra spokesperson Paul Ciaramitaro told POLITICO. “It exhibits another way in which China is competing with us globally.”

It's a little like having an actor in blackface emulating so-called 'ghetto' speech talking about how he's amazed that he has his first job due to Debbie, isn't it? Or, I guess maybe a mixed-race actor who applies blackface to affect the appearance of being blackified.

I decided to go take a look at www.DebbieSpendItNow.com, and found even more reinforcement of negative and harming stereotypes, encouraging racism and xenophobia.

It has been decorated with tea pots, dragons, lanterns, and Chinese symbols. The website also uses the stereotypical “Asian” font displaying different statistics about China’s economy in comparison to that of the United States. Various cultures and countries are grouped together in this geographically vague ad. Hoekstra has also taken the time to select and appropriate different cultural and historical symbols to be used mindlessly in his ignorant website.

1 - What conical hat? I don't see one in the video link. Is this a second version of the ad they shot without the hat?

2 - Bullshit from top to bottom. If it was supposed to be some kind of satirical poke about showing how the Chinese are competitively educated by having a Chinese girl speaking English, she should have been speaking perfect English to demonstrate her quality education. The way this ad was done does the opposite, implying the Chinese aren't really competitive because they fuck it up.

This is much better way to tell folks what we should do. I like it because its' more about working together than pointing fingers. I've seen too much finger pointing of late. Parties (Plural) are way too divisive of the last few years. We need leaders not partisan hacks beholding to the backers with the money.

Too few men in office ask 'how can I improve my voter's life?' and too many ask "What is in it for me?"

The ad turned my stomach with its attempt to instill fear of a ethnic group of people that represented a competing portion of the world economy. The fact that the actress was American-Asian brought this home, and set the fear in the laps of our public with regard to Asians, at least psychologically.

But let's back off of the tightly focused 2012 political campaign and look towards the bigger world picture. Governments plan over decades and centuries, not days and hours... unless the leadership is always evolving, like ours. The Art of War talks about planning for generations. We might want to back up and see the world agenda in context of this.

In the mid-80s, the USSR was in one piece, Germany still had its wall, China did not allow outsiders in, there was no NAFTA or Euro dollar. Additionally, the Detroit car manufacturers and ancillary OEM companies were hanging on. Jobs were not outsourced to other 3rd world or low economy countries. The US had the worlds #3 GNP and CALIFORNIA, a state, was #5. Some countries in Africa did not yet have numbers at nearing 80% dying from HIV, a virus which hit the world from an unknown source. The World Trade Towers stood tall.

At that point, a plan to move to a global world economy was unfolded before the financiers and economists headquartered in New York City. A plan to open the larger companies to larger market access...world access. The use of the information age and technology that blurred the lines of distance and difference between markets. And at that time, speakers were saying that to do so, the economy of all the countries would have to be neutralized...a melting pot of equality. When asked, they said it was highly unlikely that the great world powers could stay intact: the US, China, and the USSR. What they were saying seemed impossible at the time. Nice theory. Not useful. Yes, let's feed the poor in the third world countries. Yes it would be nice if our companies could garner larger sales. NO, it wasn't OK to make our children live on less than we were, and our grandchildren less than that.

Detroit has been a small regional picture of the steps taken in outsourcing and global competition following the layout of this plan. Detroit and its residents, were crippled and brought to their knees. The Automotive industry is a representative sample of American business. But instead of bailing from the city, Detroit's financiers gathered and pulled the resources together to put out Clint Eastwood's ad on "pulling up the bootstraps and rebuilding America". I applauded it. It is part of taking their rebuild Detroit plan to the eyes of the world and rebuilding the self-esteem of the residents.

As recently as a few years ago, I sat in yet another "sales presentation" to countywide financiers and economists at a Cal State University seminar promoting a single world economy. California has been slipping and sliding like Detroit. The keynote speaker was the retired head of California's Federal Reserve... a unit of the National Federal Reserve. When asked how he justified diluting the income of our engineers to meet the 92 cent per hour Chinese engineer income, he changed the subject and stopped taking questions from the source.

Also said, during the 80s, was the bare truth that the US could not be defeated from outside of our borders...rather we needed to fall from within. Through racial prejudice, lack of faith in our elected officials and government and so on. I found it interesting to see that Hoestra's lobby group appears to have promoted some of the underpinnings.

But then, I believe that our top two parties present us with the chosen sweethearts of the groups forwarding the single world economy agenda. No conspiracy. It's been laid out before us. The question is, do we like the goal?

And I am one of the ones that have been taken out of the work force by whatever virus is causing Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia...also rearing its head in the late 80s and by some studies, debilitating as much as 27% of the population.

Debbie Spenditnow has simply been borrowing money to rebuild this economy and let it restand, proudly, on its own. I am not sure we have done the triage to stop the bleeding. That might be a good plan before allowing more of the "loan interest" to go to funding the players benefiting from a global world economy.

That's my take. But I was in New York in the audience when the plan was being unfolded through rank and file. And I was disabled by the time it hit the colleges and community leaders in California. It's been an interesting time to watch.

I am not saying I know what it means. I am just sharing what I have seen.

What I find interesting is that Hoekstra's crowd is the bunch who are eager to outsource jobs in order to supplement their corporate sponsors profit margin.

You want to do things Pete? How about reforming corporate taxes, close up outsourcing/profit exporting benefits and make it beneficial to develop your voter's districts by giving tax incentives for developing American industry..

oh ..that's right.. you cant' do that.. it's PROTECTIONISM when we do it.